The Hellfire Series: Abandonment
by ToryTigress92
Summary: After the events of 'The Master and Margarita', Margarita and her lover have been left to live their lives in peace. But memories of the past still haunt Margarita, and an uncertain future looks set to destroy her hard-earned rest. Unexpected pain at a hard choice will tear the lovers apart as higher powers call them from their rest. M/M, background Woland/Margarita


**The Hellfire Series: Abandonment**

Warnings: some religion-based misogyny, derogatory terminology.

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to the characters of the Master and Margarita, I'm just playing around. All characters, barring OCs, belong to Mikhail Bulgakov.

Author's Note: I am writing this as an AU continuation of the Russian musical version, not the novel, so be warned if some things deviate from Bulgakov's writing.

* * *

 _He said, 'Now hush, love,'_

' _Here's your gown, there's the bed,'_

' _Lanterns down.'_

 _But I don't want to go to sleep,_

 _In all my dreams, I drown_

 _ **\- 'In All My Dreams I Drown' The Devil's Carnival**_

It was a beautiful house, to be sure. Just as she had glimpsed from the sandy path that led over the whispering brook, a trailing finger of ivy curled over a Venetian window, where her beloved Master could sit and write in peace and solitude. It stretched out from this window onto the world, into room upon room, small, cosy and yet elegantly appointed. In the dawn that graced the small orchard that bordered their eternal home, the walls of the house glowed gold with the rays of the sun, the tiles of the roof a warm, rusted red. Their days and evenings were spent in quiet study and stimulating debate, while their nights consisted of the quiet solace of each other after their long, lonely suffering and wanderings.

As time slowly passed in that strange dream-world, Margarita Nikolayevna was pleased to see that the madness that had haunted her dear Master was slowly ebbing away. His fits of fatigue and apathy, when he lay somnolent and silent on the sofa, or paced to and fro, muttering to himself; these slowly eased. The wounds of his breaking had healed, and he was nearly returned to the man she had fallen so helplessly in love with. Nearly, but not quite.

For sometimes, Margarita thought she glimpsed a terrible glint in his eye, of knowledge and understanding, of contempt for the waking world and its tribulations. Some days, he would write reams and reams of notes and refused to allow her to see, but she snatched glimpses anyway before he burned them. Revulsion filled his face when he wrote, and even on occasion when he looked upon her.

It would come as they breakfasted together in the perpetual sunshine; it came as they sat together, as she read and he wrote by the window, as they had afternoon tea, and as they spoke at length with the numerous guests that came to their door. Those that, like them, had chosen no side but had not drifted into sin and depravity. Names of great fame and import in their former world. Dickens, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Byron, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Bronte, Austen, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and so many more that their names and faces all but blurred into one for Margarita as the days passed. And still, even as he grew strong and his mind reaffirmed its former strength, that look did not leave her beloved's eyes.

Oh, she knew he still loved her, for the look would pass in an instant and he would once again be all tenderness and soft words, his every gesture weighted with the burdens she had carried and the trials she had undergone for his sake, in their long separation. But he was too clever not to realise something had changed about his lover, and Margarita Nikolayevna knew he did not like it.

For even as he grew more at peace, she began to grow restless. His slumber was quiet and undisturbed by nightmares now, and he grew more enlivened when he wrote and when he debated fiercely with their esteemed literary guests of an evening, than when he spoke with her. There were moments he would speak down to her, treating her as an uneducated, errant child, and she would blush with the humiliation of it, as would he. He would apologise, and she would accept, but she could not forget it.

And then there were the dreams, manifold and all-consuming, dragging her from her vigil at his side to her own slumber. In truth, they made her feel as if she was drowning and she did not wish to be saved.

For Margarita Nikolayevna alone understood why the Master sensed a change in her, why he began to revile and humiliate her every word and thought, why he no longer clung to her as he did once. For all his madness, for all the pain and tribulations his breaking at the hands of the critics, police and asylum doctors had wrought in him, they were an illness that could be cured, a wrong that could be righted.

But she….she was tainted forever, changed eternally by those insane, inhuman hours spent at the side of a creature far stronger and malevolent than any of their former enemies. A creature that had made her a witch, given her power to punish their enemies, to fly across the skies without a care, to dance through the night without raiment or shame in her nakedness, and had granted her dearest wishes. Who would have granted her more if she had asked it…

Some nights, the memory of her choice, of that terrible moment where the Master's name had wrenched itself from her lips even as she held him close to her, a man not her husband or her lover, who would have consumed her whole and she would have gloried in the devouring. Other nights, she was tormented by memories of his touch, of his arms holding her, burning through her thin gown as they danced in that strange, macabre ballroom, surrounded by the souls of sinners and demons, the taste of the blood-wine on her tongue, filling her with the strangest sense of power. It had frightened and bedazzled her, that strange, strange night, as rationale and passion turned traitors against the other, as mind and soul struggled to gain mastery. She had wanted to stay even as her mind urged her to leave his arms before she forgot herself, her soul whispering awful, beguiling temptations to forget her beloved, to lose herself in her dark prince's arms for eternity.

She had felt powerful, invincible, as she was dipped and whirled around in his sure embrace, and nothing had mattered for those blissful, fleeting moments. And that night of unfulfilled passion looked set to haunt her for the rest of eternity. Perhaps this was her penance for her transgressions even as her lover was granted respite from his trials. And for that, she would suffer in silence.

Margarita's days blurred into an endless monotony of mundane routine, as her lover wrote feverishly. He would not allow her to watch him writing, or to read his drafts as he once did, and she felt the slight keenly. Desperate to escape the house that had become a stifling prison to her, Margarita wandered to the very furthest boundaries of their home, finding no peace in the silence and the peaceful desolation of their haven.

She would look up at the sky, and remember the way she had dived and danced through the clouds, heady and intoxicated by the power she had been granted. The fierce, unyielding pleasure of her revenge over the vile Latunsky, and the abandonment of all her woes for one precious, infinitesimal moment, it had dried to ashes in her memory now, a thought that tormented her as she glanced over her prison. They had been granted rest, that she knew, but a cynical, cold part of her wondered how long for?

* * *

 _She once again stood over that globe Messire had shown to her, her hand shaking over it as she contemplated the world's evils. Despite her own travails, she had not wanted to believe what her eyes told her, as she gazed and witnessed suffering after suffering, evil after evil, and all presided over by a God that did not care._

 _She remembered he had tried to convince her of the power of passion over will, of the inevitability of mankind's decay. She had not wanted to believe it so, even as his words tugged at her own intellect and she was forced to concede a point in his favour. Did the world not seem as if it were racing towards destruction, even hurried along by those who claimed to fight for goodness, for freedom and emancipation from false kings? How many had she known, dragged away to the camps in Siberia, or simply disappeared, and no one dared speak out for fear of the same fate?_

 _As his hand hovered above hers on the globe, he had offered her knowledge. He had offered her power. She had felt terror at his great power when he forced her back as she tried to flee his presence, she had felt awe at his invincible command of the world, and yearned to make it her own._

 _The great seducer, there could not be a more apt name for him! She had yearned to give in, to succumb to his power and to his hunger as he held her close, their lips brushing in an aching torture. She could feel it again as she stood close to him, fantasy blurring into memory, and this time there was no interruption and no chime of the clock. Koroviev did not come, nor did Behemoth. Hella and her poisonous jealousy impeded not._

 _He had said that eternity was in her hands, the power to ease the pain of her flesh as she stood so close and yet denied what her soul yearned for, all of it her own if she had the courage to do so. And in dreams, she did._

 _She felt his hand in her hair, nestling among the wild curls, freed by her reckless flight across the Moscow night, fingers cupping the lowest curve of her skull as she met his lips with her own. Freed from her paralysis, Margarita reached up to boldly slide her fingers through that silver hair, even as he gathered her into his arms, blood-red satin against white linen, as she shivered against his mouth. She felt him steal her soul from her, and the pain was exquisite as she was cast out from God into the wilds of eternity with him, and she welcomed it joyously-_

* * *

She broke from her dream, heart pounding and skin flushed. The night was still around her, their bedroom dark but for the light of the moon outside. The Master slept at her side, one arm over her waist, but his presence at that moment, when she was wanting and flushed from illicit desire for another, for _him_ , felt smothering. Gently, she pushed his arm away and left the bed. Her lover slept too deeply to notice, as she slung a robe around her shoulders and stood at the window, staring out at the sky as night passed into watery dawn in their strange netherworld.

That afternoon, she sat reading some nondescript novel as the Master wrote feverishly. The scrape of his pen and his hushed mutterings grated on her nerves, her teeth gritted against the words that longed to break free and the strange recklessness that her dream of the night before had left lingering, like poison, in her veins. She had been quiet and surly when he had awoken that morning, and she knew he hated her moods, just as she resented his dismissal of her.

All her life, she had been dismissed by men. Her own father, so certain that she possessed neither the intelligence or the will to accomplish something, had sought to marry her off as quickly as possible; her husband, seeing in her nothing more than trophy, idol, bed-warmer and housekeeper, and now the Master too, seeing her as the angel he had built up in his memory and now dissatisfied by the reality of the change she had lived through, fighting for him. Even Messire had dismissed her, seeing her compassion for Frieda and the world as folly. Like all misanthropes, he had dismissed her, and humanity, as nothing more than sheep to be ruled. But Margarita Nikolayevna had longed sense that humanity was not sheep; they did not need to be ruled, only guided at most….she cut off her line of thought with a sigh, its portents both uneasy and disquieting to her, confusing her sense of faith in humanity and what she had been taught from birth about the evils of human nature. Even the Communists, atheist though they were, still sought to strip humanity of what they considered evil through the same poor, inefficient methods. Pain, fear and suppression, tied with thoughts of self-denial and collective poverty as the means to achieve enlightenment and salvation, Margarita had heard it before. Just instead of a cassock and an altar cloth, it was borne by the red flag and a uniform…

 _Enough!_ Margarita's courage quailed at her thoughts, and she closed her book with a _snap_ that seemed to reverberate throughout the quiet room with all the intensity of a gunshot. The Master startled from his work, and he fixed her with his now common look of mingled pity and revulsion. "What is it, my dear? You have been restless all day," he asked, his voice long-suffering and infuriatingly patient.

Something of the witch must have still clung to her, for his tone and his words riled her. She hated to be patronised. "Do not call me that!" she snapped irritably, standing from her repose to pace to the window, staring down the garden to the orchard, preternaturally sunny and bright. How she hated the sight of it, at that moment! "How can you stand it!?" she cried, heartfelt and shaking. She could bear the gulf between them no longer. "How can you bear this…this distance between us, which widens with each passing day? I know you feel it, I see it in your eyes when you look at me, feel it in your touch when you caress me! How can you sit there in quiet contemplation as if the seeds of restlessness haven't been stirring in you too and judge me?"

"I do not judge you, Margarita Nikolayevna," he replied quietly, not meeting her eyes as she turned to face him. "I revere you above all things-"

"Lying is a sin," she shot back, cold and vicious, as he abruptly shut up, eyes wide with shock. "And I am not a thing, to be worshipped or cosseted."

"I am sorry, Margarita," he began, a note of uncertainty colouring his voice now, as he ran a hand through his hair. "I do not know what has come over me lately. At first, I wanted nothing more than to rest forever, here with you, but then…I cannot explain it. I must write, Margarita, and I must not stop. The quiet is interminable to me, the peace a noxious fog depriving me of all I had forgotten to cherish. I cannot help but feel there is…more."

"Like this is just a brief respite," Margarita continued for him, her voice soft and sad now. He looked to her with shining eyes, encouraged by her understanding. "I have felt it too."

"I did not lie, I do revere you, my Margarita," the Master tried to assure her, as the silence grew thick and heavy between them. Margarita tasted the ashes in her mouth, the dead remains of whatever dreams of peace she had once entertained, as the lie once again fell from her lover's lips.

"But which do you revere, what do you love?" she asked, turning away from him.

"The woman who once hung on your every word, worshipped your every breath? Who named you 'Master' and fell into despair at our parting? Or the woman who fought for you, who punished our enemies and danced with the Devil himself to free you-?"

"You have changed, Margarita, you must see that," he sighed, rising from his chair to take her arms in his hands.

"I see that. I _**rejoice**_ in that fact," she rejoined sharply, looking towards the new manuscript he worked on. "And what of you? Have you not changed too?"

"What do you mean?" the Master asked, frowning, but she saw the flash of contempt rise in those once-beloved eyes. "The madness-"

"Is not what I speak of. Once, you trusted me with everything. Now, you will not even let me glimpse at the papers you pore over, day after day," Margarita growled fiercely, the witch that still slept within her rising to the fore for a moment, as fear bloomed in her lover's breast. She saw it, and felt the vicious impulse quelled in her breast, as her eyes fogged with tears. She moved towards the desk, but he blocked her progress and she looked to him with broken eyes.

"There…may be more coming for us," he began, and he sounded as if it took all his strength to push the words from his lips, with no trace of the ease with which they tumbled from his pen. "But I fear…it will not allow us to stay together."

"Allow? Allow!?" Margarita scoffed, breaking away from him. "The only one not allowing anything is you."

"And you?!" the Master snapped back, in sudden anger, drawing her up short. "I know you still dream of… _ **him**_ , at night. You are haunted by him. I was right when I once said you had forgotten me."

"I mourned you like a wife would, when I found you gone and our basement defiled," she snarled defiantly, her fists clenching into claws as the rage arose again. "I knew only despair, I almost took my own life for it, I sacrificed everything for you-"

"What do you know of true sacrifice?" he stopped her in her tracks with those words, cutting to her heart. His anger was that of the divine, as she had never believed him capable of, while hers, she sensed now, stemmed from the darkness of the witch she had become, for those few short hours. She saw, truly, for the first time the depth of the chasm that now separated them. Without another word, she turned on her heel and fled the room and the house.

Her lover did not follow.

* * *

She did not stop until she reached the furthest boundaries of the orchard. Her blood was running high, and her heart pounded with anger and disillusionment, as well as with sadness. What had this place done to them? Better to have stayed apart, to have languished and suffered alone, than to hear the words he had thrown at her, and she at him.

Margarita sank down to her knees on the grass, cool and cushioning beneath her. She let her body collapse sideways, throwing herself on her side, as she allowed the tears that burned her eyes to come and flow freely.

Had he not spoken the truth? She was still haunted by all she saw, and felt, that strange and magical night. She could rid herself of him anymore than she could extirpate the germs of darkness in her own soul. She was not a creature of pure light, made only to suffer and rejoice in it. And only one person seemed to understand that, even to welcome it.

She sighed out her agony, and a word slipped from her lips in the quietest of whispers. " _Messire_ …"

She froze, terrified of what she had done. Would he come? Would he hear her, would he be angry at her nerve in asking for him when she had made her choice…

But the sky did not darken, and the sunlight did not cool on her skin. He had not come.

Margarita forced away the disappointment, pretending it to be relief as she slowly sat from her supine pose on the grass, just as an achingly familiar and remembered voice echoed across the orchard. "Queen Margot!"

She spun, shocked beyond measure, to find Behemoth hailing her from the shadow of the trees but not as she remembered him. Gone was the fur and tail, and in his place the demon pageboy with eyes of black obsidian and a voice far older than his appearance suggested.

"Behemoth!" she called, before she faltered. "That is your name, isn't it? I don't know what else to call you."

"It will do," the demon shrugged nonchalantly. "I have many names, as do most. As do you, Queen Margot."

Not caring for riddles, Margarita stood and went to him, hands twisting her skirt nervously. "Why are you here, old friend?" she asked in a whisper.

"I heard your summons," he sighed, eying her dolefully. She stiffened at that, but he held up a calming claw. "Worry not, _Madonna belissima_ , he did not hear you. This place is not within his purlieu, and he has sealed himself away from all and sundry."

"Away? What do you mean?" Margarita asked frowningly.

"Ahhh, you know not what wound you dealt him, oh Queen," Behemoth dramatically clutched his heart. "You denied his victory, rejected his desire. He has not known such pain in…well, ever. His desolation rivals that of Romeo, Adonis, Paris of Troy even Eros himself-"

"You're just choosing names of romantic heroes at random, aren't you?" Margarita interrupted wryly, finding odd comfort in Behemoth's irreverence.

"Well, yes," the demon remarked slyly. "But why do you call him? Trouble in paradise? Ohoho, but there is!" he exclaimed gleefully, on seeing Margarita's stony face as she turned from him.

"You are lucky, demon, that you no longer have cat ears for me to box," she replied sourly, and he growled.

"Of all the cheek! Here I come, taking time from _**my**_ valuable hours mind you, to visit an old friend and what do I receive for my trouble? Insults and threats!" he spat. "What use are old friends if they cannot hit near the mark with impunity?"

Margarita sighed, wondering exactly how the demon mustered energy for such dramatics.

"Well, I might just take myself off and leave you to your rest, you ungrateful-" Behemoth continued to spit, in much the same manner as an angry cat would do, when Margarita seized his wrist, panicked at the thought of being left alone again.

"Please, don't leave," she begged. "I am sorry, Behemoth. You are right. Too right for comfort."

"Tell Behemoth all about it!" the demon pageboy exclaimed delightedly, flopping down in the grass and patting the space beside him.

Awkwardly, Margarita did so, taking a seat beside him. The incongruity of the situation made her want to laugh, but she didn't have the gaiety for it at that moment. "He…has changed. He would not welcome you now, I fear," she began stiltedly.

"And you have not, Queen Margot?" Behemoth inquired, peering at her face. She looked down, knowing the answer to that question. "It is often the way. It is all _grande amore_ one moment, then tears and broken vases the next!"

"It is not just that," Margarita snapped impatiently. "There is…more. We both feel…as if something is coming. As if this is not permanent, as if we will soon be called onward to…something else."

"Together?" Behemoth asked.

"No," Margarita sighed, pain growing in her heart akin to that she had felt when she had found her lover's basement flat abandoned. "Not together."

"No, not together," Behemoth nodded knowingly. "How could you be? Him, the embodiment of divine suffering, enfolded in darkness but apart from it, and you who embraced it, relished it, and danced in the arms of its Prince?"

Margarita looked away, reluctant to face what she secretly suspected in her own heart. "Enough of me. Tell me, how goes everything at…home?" she asked, unsure what exactly to call Behemoth's residence. It felt oddly silly calling it 'Hell' and yet that was exactly what it was.

"All is well, bar Messire's moods. Hella is out of favour for her disgraceful treatment of you at the ball, Faggot-Koroviev is back to his moodiest, grimmest self and Azazello is off on some new venture at the master's behest. The master mopes and broods but then-!" Behemoth suddenly shut up, horror in his eyes as he clapped his hands over his mouth.

"Your ready tongue will get you in trouble one day, Behemoth," Margarita remarked dryly, before curiosity bade her ask. "What does Messire brood for?"

"I should not say more, I cannot or I will be for the fire lakes!" Behemoth gulped, horror leeching into pure terror, before seemingly pausing to take stock and shrugging his shoulders as the emotion drained away. "It's no worse than I've had before, so I'll tell all."

"You're a terrible gossip, my friend," Margarita laughed, her depression forgotten before the irrepressible demon.

"It is because of you, my queen," Behemoth proclaimed solemnly. "Oh my lady, you know not the wound you dealt him with your choice. He desired you and knew your own desire for him, and he let you go. Can't see why myself, he could have just kept you and you wouldn't have complained," he sniffed, eyes roving over Margarita's form as if trying to ascertain the exact reason for Messire's obsession and finding no obvious answer. Margarita went to reply, but the demon wagged a finger at her in remonstrance. "Ah ah ah, don't lie to Behemoth now. You may not love him, but you want him. I saw you at the ball after the blood toast. Don't deny it, Queen Margot."

Ashamed, Margarita looked away, but she could not demur. She had wanted him, she did _**want**_ him, with a power that terrified her even now. She did not love him, but she felt she needed him. She felt strong and powerful in his arms, in his power, and she yearned for one more taste even as Eve yearned for the taste of the Apple, so long ago.

Unknowing of Margarita's ruminations, Behemoth suddenly jumped to his feet, dusting off his tunic perfunctorily. "Well, I must be off! Much to do and I cannot be missed. Good day, Queen Margot!" he trilled merrily, before setting off through the trees before Margarita could muster a word. She stood and tried to chase after him, but he had already disappeared from her narrow little world, and she mourned the loss. Mind astir, she turned and walked back to the house.

* * *

The lovers still did not speak as day passed into evening, and tonight no guests lingered at the door. Margarita was genuinely surprised when she heard the knock and went to answer it.

At the door stood a man in a ragged blue chiton and sagging sandals, hair unkempt and eyes wary as he gazed at her. "Well met, Margarita Nikolayevna," he murmured, a false smile on his lips that she instinctively distrusted. There was a false patina to him, despite his façade of poverty and pious devotion, and she felt revulsion as she stared at him. "Will you not invite a weary guest in?"

"Welcome, Matthew," she finally sighed, stepping aside to let him pass. "What brings you here?"

Dread filled her as she awaited his answer. He regarded her narrowly, with glittering eyes, as if weighing what to tell her. "I seek your lover. Take me to him," he replied in a commanding voice, but to Margarita it just sounded weak and pompous. Regardless, she turned and led him to the study.

Without bothering to introduce their guest, she left Matthew the Levite to his host, as the Master stood from his manuscript and regarded their guest with wide eyes. She closed the door, but did not leave it, ears pricked and alert as she listened for their conversation.

"Welcome, blessed disciple!" her lover intoned, with a reverence that Margarita had never heard before, especially considering the rather poor image he had painted of him in his novel. "What brings you here?"

"Thank you, Master of Words," the disciple replied courteously, and Margarita heard footsteps as he moved deeper into the room. She heard rustling as paper was lifted and shuffled, and felt anger kindle. He was letting him read his papers! An honour she was now barred from!

"How goes your latest work?" Matthew continued.

"Well, I think. I write with a power and a focus I have never known before," her lover replied cautiously. "Forgive me, sir, but why are you here? I don't think it is to critique my work."

Margarita waited with bated breath for the answer. Dread strengthened and turned to certainty, as her heart pounded in her ears.

"Indeed not," Matthew the Levite continued. "You are right to say your writing has returned to you in such majesty and authority as never before. It is my master's work, and _**he**_ sent it back to you for a reason. That reason is why I am come tonight. It is time, Master, as I sense you know."

"It's true I have felt…impatient for some time, waiting for the next breath as if denied it. Margot felt it too," her lover replied earnestly.

"Yes, your lover," Matthew continued, and she didn't need to see him to imagine the sneer curling his lip. "The witch who danced with the devil."

"She did it to save me and revenge us on the men who destroyed our lives," the Master replied, but it was a half-hearted attempt at defending his lover. Margarita felt her heart break at that moment, and she bit her fist to avoid crying out with the final agony. "She has felt it too, does she not come with me?"

"No," Matthew said tersely, cold, pompous and self-important. "The whore will not join you. The Master calls you to a greater purpose, and grants you the chance to earn your place in the light. That chance is not offered to Margarita Nikolayevna. Her fate lies elsewhere."

There was nothing but silence then, as Margarita strained to hear but hated to receive the gifts of her eavesdropping. She heard a soft _thump_ , as if a weight falling onto a soft surface, and then Matthew's gentle, insufferable tones again.

"You know it is necessary. She is tainted and unworthy of you, Master of Words. She does not belong in the light of our great and merciful Master."

"It is true, I have noticed…a change in her," the Master replied, slowly and painfully, as if it hurt him to tear Margarita's heart from her chest. "She is not the woman I loved. I do not want her with me anymore."

At that Margarita could bear no more. Turning, she fled the corridor and rushed to her bedroom. She collapsed on the bed and cried tears of blood as her heart turned to ashes. Nothing could compare to the pain of that moment, not the moment she found the basement deserted, not when she stood on the bridge and contemplated suicide, not when she rejected Messire and cried out in desperation and anguish for her Master, no not even then did she feel the pain she felt now. Behemoth's words, concerning Messire, rang in her ears then and she wept bitterly. Although she did not love that strange, wild, dangerous creature, she knew she would have been safe and strong in his keeping. She would have relished his affections and his passion, would have welcomed his hunger without fear, if only she had the courage to have taken that first step.

But now, it was far too late and she was reaping her reward. Peace had turned into a nightmare, and she was sure that could he see her now, Messire would feel only pleasure at her torment.

Later, as evening deepened to night, Margarita heard the bedroom door open. Quiet footsteps started towards the bed but stopped, and she heard a deep sigh. "He is gone then?" she whispered, not caring to turn over and face her erstwhile lover.

"Yes, he is gone. You heard then?" her lover asked in turn, awkward and unsure. Once, she would have found it lovable. Now she wanted to scream and hurt him for it. "Margot…"

"Don't touch me," she hissed, when she sensed his attempt to reach out to her. "Just…go."

"You know this needs to happen, Margarita," the Master breathed behind her, but still she did not turn. "We both felt it…the call. We both yearn for more than just peace. We both yearn for a higher purpose. Now the call sounds."

"For you perhaps, but not for me," Margarita spat defiantly, still glaring through red-rimmed eyes at the wall. "Well then, if you are resolved, go! GO!"

That last was wrenched from her throat in a terrible scream of anguish, but he was already gone. Margarita sank into an uneasy, disturbed sleep.

* * *

 _She dreamt again, that night. Unlike the others, all desperate fantasies ceded from haunting memory, this held the bitter tang of pure recollection._

 _It was the night of Satan's Spring Ball, and she danced with the devil. And the devil looked down on her in his arms, with admiration and adoration as he guided her through the unfamiliar turns and twists of the sinful dance._

 _He lifted her into his arms, strong and steady, and she felt as if she was flying again, chilled by the frozen Russian air even as heat licked her skin and desire pooled warm and low in her belly. She wanted him, oh how she wanted him!_

 _And his eyes, those terrifying and strange pair of eyes, promised her she could, promised all sort of wicked delights if she would ask it of him. For once, the thought of her lover did not, could not, intrude, as she danced and swayed with the Dark Prince._

 _But fear grew even as the desire and the pleasure did so, tempering her body and restoring a modicum of sense to her fevered mind. The absence of the Master from her thoughts scared her, the power and the effortless way he played her body, terrified her and she tried to run. His power drew her back, but her soul willingly complied, turned traitor against reason._

 _She felt his hands, strong and graceful, burning as a brand, on her waist, holding her tight; on her arms, caressing desirously, on the curve of her back as he drew his palm over it, enflaming her nerves. She should have known it that night, sensed its import. Messire's touch was a brand, and he claimed her with it, allowing her no rest or peace even as he let her go._

 _She should have forgotten it, forgotten him, but it would not let her go. It lived on in fevered, bitter memory, in her delirious dreamings, tormenting her, condemning her to forever wonder what might have been, if the cock had never crowed, if the dawn had never broken…if she had never run away._

* * *

The sunlight seemed weaker than before, when Margarita fitfully stirred in her ruined bed. She had not thought it possible to feel pain when she should have experienced peace, but her heart was in anguish and it spread to other extremities. Her head ached, her eyes felt sore and dry, and her limbs preternaturally weakened by her heart's convulsions. She forced herself upright, but did not need to see the undisturbed bed beside her to know that the Master was not there.

He had abandoned her.

As her mind rejected what her soul sensed was the truth, she cried a scream of anguish and sorrow. "MASTER!"

She stumbled from the bed, uncaring for her lank hair and wrinkled clothing. What care should she have now, when she was abandoned and friendless? Was this the peace that was promised?

The words of their last conversation, of every conversation over the past few days, echoed in her mind but she could not bring herself to accept their truth as her own. Not yet.

For now, she railed and mourned and reviled. Mirrors were shattered, china vases smashed, sideboards overturned in her helpless fury. Not even the sight of blood on her knuckles, a feat she'd believed impossible in this strange afterlife, could sate and salve her fury.

At last, unable to stand the deserted house, abandoned and desolate as she was, she rushed from the house and into the garden. She ran into the orchard, darting from tree to tree, heedless in her mad haste of where she ran. Eventually, the weakness of her limbs and the pain in her head sharpened in strength, and she stumbled as the anguish supplanted fury, and she gave into it.

But even as she collapsed, overwrought and exhausted, her body used up and burned out, she felt a strong frame against her own. Not the Master's, for he was slender and lithe, but tall and hard, clothed in dark armour. Steely arms bent and scooped her up into their grip, as her head lolled, doll-like and helpless, and she glimpsed silver hair and piercing, inhuman eyes looking down on her inscrutably. Out of the very corner of her eye, she glimpsed black fur and a whisker. _Behemoth…_

Shaking off thought of the newly cat-like demon, Margarita looked up at her saviour and succumbed to the darkness plucking at the edges of her consciousness. " _Messire_ …" she sighed, and then she saw and heard nothing more.

* * *

 _To be continued in Part II: Dance With The Devil_


End file.
